Index     Home     Vorige    

Doctor Robert

Composer(s) : Lennon and McCartney
Year : 1966
Duration :
Key :
Meter :

Chords/Tabs: Doctor Robert

Notes on "Doctor Robert" (DR)

KEY	B Major


			Verse -> Refrain -> Verse/outro (into fadeout)


Style and Form

- While "Doctor Robert's" most conspicuous claim to infamy may be its oblique-yet-obvious reference to recreational drug usage, it is musically most interesting for its harmonic/home-key trickery.

- I am also quite fond of the incongruity of the Christmas-Carol type of arrangement given to the refrain, but I reiterate that the game played here with the home key is (IMHO, of course) one of John's more daring experiments with harmony this side of "Strawberry Fields Forever," or "I Am The Walrus." You might want to think of it as an "harmonic hallucination," that (intentinally placed here for this reason or not) is ironic in context of the song's lyrics.

- The lyrics make constant wordplay with the title phrase; mostly as an interjection at the end of lines, but also, for the sake of avoiding foolish consistency, you find it surprisingly fitting in within the flow of the narrative just once in a while, and, best of all, you also find it popping up at the start of lines, where you'd least expect it.

- Overall, the song feels a bit "slight" in terms of its short form, lack of an instrumental break, and no variation of the arrangement later than the first refrain. It's interesting to contemplate how one's perception of the "size" of a song is related as much to matters of formal and instrumental complexity, as it is to temporal duration.

Melody and Harmony

- In the final analysis, I believe that B Major clearly asserts itself as the home key of this song, but that opening on the A chord, which is sustained so nonchalantly for a full eight measures, has a funny way of getting things off to a tonally equivocal start.

- True, you *can* establish a sense of home key by droneful insistance of a single chord, but one of the hallmarks of so-called "Western/Tonal" music is the establishment of home keys by virtue of chord progressions. In this song, the first real cadence in the song is the one to B Major towards the end of the verse, and though as it unfolds it feels somewhat like a modulation to B from A, I truly believe that one retrosepctively interprets the A Major chord as flat-VII of B!


- The backing arrangement features a relatively rich mixture of instruments, though the recording of it, to quote Lewisohn, is rather "gimmick free." BTW, I hear no piano in the mix, regardless of what ML says.

- There's some staggered layering in the arrangement. For example, the backing vocals start in the second verse, and the lead guitar overdubs commence just before the bridge. The bridge nicely contrasts with the verses by virtue of the added harmonium and the lush vocals mixed to sound like more than just 2 or 3 Beatles singing.

- By the same token nothing new is introduced past the mid-point, and given the group's solid track record in the area of avoiding foolish consistency, it feels like a bit of a letdown when they don't do it. In contrast, consider the value added in the final verse of a song like "We Can Work It Out" where, in the same place where there always *was* a syncopated kick in the rhythm, they execute the phrase in rather perversely equal eighth notes.

- John's lead vocal sounds automatically double tracked with each of the two slightly-out-of-phase tracks split onto separate stereo channels; this is a surrealistic "effect" we saw earlier in the "The Word."



- The intro is a simple four-measure vamp on the A Major chord which, at this point of the song, you'd think is the I, rather than the flat VII.

- The most significant thing about this intro is the way the lead guitar part introduces the 4->3 appoggiatura motif that shows up later in both the verse and the bridge.


- The verse sounds like a relatively four-square, four-phrase song section, but there's a rhetorical blip added to the third phrase which pushes the total section length up to 18 measures:

-------------- 2X --------------- |A |- |- |- | B: flat-VII |F# |- |- |- |- |- | V |E |F# |B |- | IV V I

- The 4->3 melodic motif shows up here in the third phrase, on the syllables, "bet-ter" and "un-der"(stand).


- The refrain sounds like a predictable eight-measure, two-phrase song section, but very similarly to the verse, it rhetorically rounds itself out to an unusual ten measures, the final two of which ellide with the start of the next verse.

|B |- |E |B | I IV I |B |- |E |- |A |- | IV flat-VII

- The E Major chord of the first phrase sounds unequivocally like IV, but in the second phrase it sounds rather like the "V-of-flat-VII;" think about it ...

- The 4->3 motif here is found on the second of the three "well, well, wells."


- The official track is mastered to sound as though it were a typical fadeout ending, but if you listen carefully, it appears that the take in the studio may have broken down just where the track is quickly faded. Note how when they reach the F# chord in this final verse, the vocals drop out and the rhythm track moves back to B long before 6 measures of F# have elapsed.


- Something subtle but nice was lost when "Doctor Robert" was pulled from the American _Revolver_ album.

    - "For No One" is in the key of B.

    - "I Want To Tell You" is in the key of A.

    - "Doctor Robert" is in the key of B, but it tries to trick you into thinking it might be at least partially in the key of A.

- As such, it effects an interesting harmonic transition between the the songs which surround it. Alas, when you put the song on _Yesterday and Today_, the effect is lost.

Alan (

"Well, not your real opinion, naturally.  It'll be written out and
 you'll learn it." 				        030595#100

                Copyright (c) 1995 by Alan W. Pollack
                          All Rights Reserved

Ook op Yesterday and Today:

ChordsNotes On
Drive My Car Drive My Car
I'm Only Sleeping I'm Only Sleeping
Nowhere Man Nowhere Man
Doctor Robert Doctor Robert
Yesterday Yesterday
Act Naturally Act Naturally
And Your Bird Can Sing And Your Bird Can Sing
If I Needed Someone If I Needed Someone
We Can Work It Out We Can Work It Out
What Goes On What Goes On
Day Tripper Day Tripper

Ook op Revolver:

ChordsNotes On
Taxman Taxman
Eleanor Rigby Eleanor Rigby
I'm Only Sleeping I'm Only Sleeping
Love You Too Love You Too
Here, There and Everywhere Here, There and Everywhere
Yellow Submarine Yellow Submarine
She Said She Said She Said She Said
Good Day Sunshine Good Day Sunshine
And Your Bird Can Sing And Your Bird Can Sing
For No One For No One
Doctor Robert Doctor Robert
I Want to Tell You I Want to Tell You
Got to Get You into My Life Got to Get You into My Life
Tomorrow Never Knows Tomorrow Never Knows

(c) 2020 Serge Girard